Teutonic Cemetery located behind St. Peter’s
A homeless man who attended daily Mass sometimes twice a day at the Church of St. Anna in Rome for 25 years was buried in the Vatican Cemetery when it was learned that he had died and no one had claimed his body.
The Catholic Herald is reporting that Willy Herteller, a Flemish man who was homeless and known throughout the city of Rome for urging pilgrims to go to Confession and pray daily, died in December at the age of 80. However, weeks went by and no one came to claim his body at the local morgue.
When a Vatican official named Monsignor Americo Ciani of the Roman Rota heard about it, he arranged to have the man buried at the Teutonic Cemetery which is located just behind St. Peter’s Basilica.
Vatican spokesman Father Ciro Benedettini told Crux.com that everyone at the Vatican regarded Herteller as a good man.
“He used to say that receiving Communion was his medicine,” Father Benedettini said.
Throughout the years, Vatican employees would arrange for housing for Herteller, but he would eventually tire of it and return to sleeping on the street.
“He slept with eight other homeless people, trying to bring them closer to Jesus,” Benedettini said.
Herteller’s parish priest, Fr Bruno Silvestrini, told Vatican Radio that the man had attended 7 a.m. Mass for 25 years.
“He was very, very open and had made many friends,” Fr. Silvestrini said. “He spoke a lot with young people, he spoke to them of the Lord, he spoke of the Pope, he would invite them to the celebration of the Eucharist. He was a rich person of great faith…
“Then we no longer saw him, and subsequently we heard about his death. I’ve never seen so many people knocking on my door to ask when the funeral was, how they could help to keep his memory alive,” he said.
Almost everyone who commented on the story on the Crux site had the same opinion about Herteller – he was a saint.
“This man sounds like a candidate for sainthood in my opinion, going to Mass twice a day and telling pilgrims to go to Confession and pray every day,” said one commenter. “Willy Herteller, pray for us, and may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”
Another summed up Herteller’s fate very succinctly. “He isn’t homeless anymore!”
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